I was just thinking that, in barely over a year, we will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the first officially released Claire Boucher songs (The Eye and Behaviour). But then I remembered Lethe. The timing of Lethe (and even why it was leaked, since she never officially released it) is confusing. Sometimes it's listed as a 2007 release, but most of the time, 2009. Anyone know more details on the recording date?
Posted Dec 21, 2017, 8:37 PM UTC
I'm not sure. In her March 2010 interview with her college radio station CKUT Claire said she started actively writing music "three years ago", so either date is possible.
https://soundcloud.com/radiockut/grimes-live-on-ckut-march-15-2010 (Interview starts at 10:47.)
If it really is from 2007, it's among the very first stuff she ever wrote.
Damn, I need to listen to that interview!! I can't recall ever hearing that. This seems to be a relatively recent soundcloud upload from earlier this year. Have you noticed if CKUT uploaded other Grimes stuff from their archives? I know they have a long Grimes/Tim Hecker conversation (possibly even including music collab) recorded soon after she recorded Visions (but before it was released) and Hecker had just done Ravedeath 1972 at the time.
I just did a search on SoundCloud for CKUT Grimes, but didn't find anything else.
I know CKUT said they wanted to find more Grimes stuff from their archives to publicly release, but their archives are supposed to be a bit of a mess organization-wise. It doesn't help that their staff is made up of a constantly changing (due to graduating) group of college interns.
I just listened to it and I think this may be legit the first Grimes interview ever. Your thread from three days ago got hidden somehow, so no one saw it and upvoted. Try to message the mods to fix that- this interview should be heard by everyone.
Because of this sub' settings the soundcloud links are filtered automatically. I approved that post.
Thanks. I just messaged them.
woah there's a whole unreleased song in there! thank you for sharing this.
i think 2007 was Drome, it is a mystery
Were all these songs originally on her myspace?
Lethe was originally released on her MySpace.
From what I understand, D R O M E was originally released on either her Tumblr or her SoundCloud, although there's some speculation that it was also released as an exclusive EP for the indie music magazine of the same name in July 2012.
Thanks, another rare interview I hadn't seen before.
D: Is there any particular event of your life which address you to take a musical career? G: Actually, I could say there are a few of those. Maybe the most meaningful was when, a while back, one of my best friends, who I had been working on music with, died. After that I promised my self I would be an artist and I would spend my precious time doing things I did want to do even if it meant starving.
If she's talking about "David," he died in March 2008. But she also says she had been working on music with him. Is it possible that Lethe was a collaboration between the two, and that might explain why she doesn't like to talk about it, and doesn't consider it as part of her own discography, which is entirely self produced?
That actually makes a lot of sense. So this is the timeline, then:
Lethe (December 18, 2007; according to Gloam on her old MySpace) possibly with David
David's passing (March 2008)
Arbutus Spring 2009 Sampler (April 2009) as Claire Boucher
Geidi Primes (January 10, 2010) as Grimes
Performance/interview on CKUT, her college's radio station (March 15, 2010)
https://soundcloud.com/radiockut/grimes-live-on-ckut-march-15-2010
Performance on The Garden of Earthly Delights (July-ish 2010) featuring "Black Hair"
https://www.mixcloud.com/Gardener/grimes-in-session-mix/
Halfaxa (September 30, 2010) as Grimes
Unplugged performance on TVMcGill, her college's TV station (November 19, 2010)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7rM67NPhZ8
Darkbloom (April 18, 2011) Arguably the beginning of her "professional" career, although I consider her Unplugged performance to be both the end of her "non-professional" career and the beginning of her "professional" one.
Altered Zones mix (Late April 2011) featuring "Fragments of the Future"
just look at her http://www.dromemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/grimes.jpg
Lethe has been released on 18th December 2007. Proof: https://myspace.com/grimesgrime/music/album/lethe-2016469
We needed to celebrate three days ago... ten years of Grimes. We completely failed her. ❄️🐉
Claire had a productive career so far. If you put together all her albums, EPs, remixes, rarities, collaborations, there are over 5 hours of music. I'm not even talking about her unreleased music that was never played in public.
And she's remarkably consistent. In my opinion, she hasn't released a bad song from Darkbloom onward. Everything ranges from good to transcendent. Well, except for "Take Me Away", but I consider that more of a Bleachers song than a Grimes song.
And, while less consistent, there's a ton of gems in her "non-professional" 2007-2010 stuff. That's really impressive given that she'd never written music (or even had a major interest in writing/performing music) before that. She's a gift. I don't know how she does it. The art angels are really with her, apparently.
I'm also stunned her music video directing and editing is so precise, as well!
By the way, I did a celebration thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimes/comments/7les6x/10_years_4_days_since_the_lethe_ep_has_been/
I love that Claire listed the genre as "Garage Rap/Grime".
I know she chose her stage name when she saw "Grime" listed as a music genre on MySpace. I wonder if this was the moment she chose it.
This was almost certainly that Myspace account where she picked her famous stage name. The address grimes was already taken so she used grimesgrime.
On 1st December 2008, she opened another account, boucherville. This is how it looked like in April 2010 (the earliest version saved on Web Archive): http://web.archive.org/web/20100414025031/https://myspace.com/boucherville
Grimes got her first album review in January 2010. Weird Canada reviewed Geidi Primes: https://weirdcanada.com/2010/01/review-grimes-geidi-primes/
Thanks! It's really cool that her old MySpace has been preserved like that.
The June 8, 2010 performance with Grouper listed under "Upcoming Shows" is the same one that she plugs at the end of her CKUT radio interview.
By the way, that boucherville page has been captured 117 times so far. Here's an overview/timeline: http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://myspace.com/boucherville